About 150 years ago, Robert Browder Kent's ancestors owned land near downtown that became the city's first public water supply, then its first public park — Browder's Springs, better known today as Dallas Heritage Village.

So when he stood up to tell the Park and Recreation Board on Thursday why and where Dallas desperately needs more parks, he felt like he was conducting family business.

But the trust is actively trying to change that: For the last six months, Kent's office, in conjunction with bcWORKSHOP and the Texas Trees Foundation, has worked to identify the blank spaces in Dallas' park system. The data came from myriad sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, Dallas County health officials and City Hall.

Where Dallas needs parks, according to the Trust for Public Land

Kent said Thursday that using geo-mapping and other resources, they've identified 1,600 acres of privately owned vacant land spread throughout the city that could — and should — one day serve as parks. The trust also found 1,950 acres of publicly owned land that could be transformed into parkland — and that does not include, among other things, the Trinity River greenbelt, which the trust already considers parkland.

The list includes, for instance, a 7-acre stretch of fenced-off, city-owned weeds running alongside a creek just south of Samuell High School in Pleasant Grove. It includes an Oncor easement that runs from LBJ Freeway to Forest Lane in the north. And it includes 58 acres of privately owned nothing at Bonnie View and Stuart Simpson roads, not far from Paul Quinn College.

"We as a city have got to make parks a priority because parks are more than just nice places to spend an afternoon," Kent said in an interview. "It's critical to solving social challenges, environmental challenges, economic challenges. And now we have the data to prove it."

Park board members asked for the trust's list of parcels they could share with City Council members.

"This is the most exciting thing that's come along," said board president Max Wells, Mayor Mike Rawlings' appointee. "It will be of great benefit to all our citizens for a long, long period of time."

Kent said new parks are essential for a handful of reasons, chief among them cooling neighborhoods trapped in the urban heat island and connecting parts of the city cut off from rapid transit. New parks also would protect neighborhoods from flooding and improve residents' health simply by giving them something to do outdoors.

And, according to the trust's briefing, "parks are particularly important to neighborhoods with a high prevalence of low-income households, children, senior citizens, and residents with limited English-proficiency. For these groups, parks fill the need for common public space that may not be readily available in their neighborhoods."

The trust's work, which is expected to last two more years, is being funded by private sources, among them the Meadows Foundation, Earth Day Texas founder Trammell S. Crow and other anonymous donors.

There remains one giant problem: the tiny amount of money the city actually spends on parks.

According to the presentation given to the board, Dallas is at the bottom of the list when it comes to park spending per resident — just $76, compared with Seattle's $281 and New York City's $201. Willis Winters, director of the Park and Recreation Department, told the board Thursday, "It's embarrassing that Dallas is at the bottom of the list."

After the meeting, Winters said he hopes the board will approve land acquisition in the May 2017 bond package — a package already overloaded with asks from Fair Park, Dallas Midtown, the Katy Trail and others hoping for some of the guesstimated $300 million that would go toward citywide needs.

Winters said the city hasn't had any money set aside for land acquisition since the 1990s. There have been some purchases, with money already set aside, as well as donations. But the last time the city put any money into neighborhood parks was in 2003, when, during the bond election, voters approved spending $57.3 million to improve about 150 neighborhood parks.

But in recent years the city has turned to private sources to help plant parks, including Klyde Warren, whose $110 million price tag was split between tax dollars and private donors. The downtown parks are also a public-private split: Robert Decherd, former chief executive of The Dallas Morning News' parent A. H. Belo Corporation, pledged $35 million and asked the city to come up with $35 million more in the coming bond package.

Said Winters on Thursday, "There hasn't been the political will to include parkland acquisition funding because the other needs were so high."